As a social media marketer moving into 2019, it can be a challenging but exciting time. It’s time to look for new trends and tools, to enhance your marketing efforts and improve on last year. You must adapt and upskill in order to stay ahead of the curve, and ahead of your competitors.
In 2019, social media will continue to play a huge role in our marketing efforts. The consumer wants to connect with brands in real-time and have personal interactions with them. Social media gives customers a quick and direct line of communication with companies, which means you must ensure your social profiles are up-to-scratch.
As we enter the new year, there is no better time than now to double check and update all your company information across all your social media profiles. Is there anything to add to your bio? Did you win any awards last year or perhaps added extra services to your offerings?
Often, a consumer will check out your social profiles before your website, so you need to ensure they are completely up-to-date.
The hard work doesn’t stop there though -the world of social media is constantly evolving. In this blog post, we’re going to outline some of the biggest social media marketing trends that you need to know about for 2019.
Real-time communication
Consumers are becoming more and more impatient and they want responses instantly in 2019. They want around the clock support, real-time interaction, chatbots and constant monitoring.
This is because as long as social media exists, you have customers who never sleep. It might seem overwhelming, but there are lots of digital tools you can utilise to offer these 24/7 conversations. Between scheduling tools, chatbots and marketing automation, you can get in front of your ideal customer at the right time.
In 2019, timeliness is an incredibly important part of your social media strategy. Consumers will expect their Twitter or Facebook query to be answered straight away. They want their problems solved now.
Personalisation
Personalisation is a huge trend across all types of marketing in 2019, not just within social media. Marketers can now get insights into all kinds of information about your social media followers. As well as that, today’s consumers are demanding personalisation. They want to be treated like individuals and not mass marketed to like we might have done in previous years.
Think about a recommended item from Amazon or eBay or a suggested show from Netflix – they are personalising the browsing experience depending on your previous choices.
You might be thinking – how does this apply to my business? Marketers now have so many digital tools they can use to capture personal information about their audience. Marketing automation will offer you the tools to capture data, store it and use it to your advantage in the future.
Social listening
A growing trend from 2018, social listening is expected to get bigger in 2019. It allows you to track, analyse and respond to conversations about your brand and industry online. Also known as social media monitoring, it’s the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the internet. It’s typically a two-step process.
First, you monitor every social media channel for mentions of your brand, your competitors, the product or services you offer and any keywords relevant to your business.
Then you analyse that information and create ways to use it to your advantage and put it into action.
If you’re not already involved in social listening, now is the time to get on board. Dedicate time every week to analyse social media channels and see what you can find out about your business or the sector you’re in.
Video content isn’t going anywhere
Each year, video content becomes more and more popular. It’s continuing to grow and is expected to once again dominate the market in 2019. According to some experts, 80% of what we consume online will soon be video content.
In particular, Live Video will continue to grow as a popular content type in 2019. According to Social Media Today, the trend has always been popular on YouTube but has now taken over Facebook and Instagram, to the point that we get notified when someone is going live.
People enjoy Live Videos because they are real and raw. Social media followers appreciate the authenticity of it all and increase the perceived transparency of a brand.
Micro-influencers
Social media influencers have become a huge talking point in marketing over the last few years. We now have an array of people who make millions just because of their social media profiles. These people have thousands, if not millions of followers and are incredibly attractive to brands who market to the same people.
However, the number of social media influencers has grown and prices for their services can outweigh the benefits of the collaboration. Therefore, companies are turning to micro-influencers for better value.
A micro-influencer has fewer than 10,000 followers but their engagement level is much higher and much more genuine. Engagement levels will be more important than follower count in 2019.
These smaller names are not targeted by advertisers, and therefore their feed isn’t saturated in ‘Paid partnerships’ or ‘collaborations,’ which can turn some social media followers off.
In 2019, instead of aiming to work with the bigger social media stars, do your research and look at the smaller guys.
ConclusionÂ
Now it’s time to get stuck into it and update your social media strategy and filter these new trends into it. As you know, marketing trends update and change all the time, so it’s critical that you stay on top of your game all year and update your strategy regularly.
